Kat Novoa grew up witnessing family members and close friends experience domestic violence, and then experienced emotionally-abusive romantic relationships herself, she said.
In 2018, she used those adverse experiences to help others by becoming a domestic violence advocate. This advocacy eventually led her to create Babes of Wellness, a gym for queer women in Compton.
Recently, Novoa scored first place in the national Amigas In Business Pitch Competition. Capital One Business partnered with #WeAllGrow to give Latina entrepreneurs around the country a chance to win a portion of $30,000 in grants.
#WeAllGrow is a “lifestyle community” based in L.A. that hosts digital and in-person events. It provides tools to Latinas to help them make social and economic impacts on their communities.
Novoa won $15,000.
Her resume includes certified personal trainer, nutrition coach and trauma-informed coach. She launched the gym in 2018 out of her garage to create a safe space for domestic violence survivors to work on their wellbeing.
“Seeing the need they had for feeling safe again and rebuilding their relationship with themselves, I simply followed my intuition, found a need and took it one step at a time,” she told L.A. Inno.
The Compton location opened in 2021.
She said she will use the $15,000 for two main things: gym equipment that is "long-awaited and needed to support the growing number of members and their strength,” and R&D of wellness products. This includes investigating partnering with various food & beverage and health companies, so the gym can sell their products.
Daniela Rodriguez-Firmani, the co-founder and CEO of Neems, headquartered in Vernon, took second place in the competition. Neems makes custom jeans with sustainable materials.
She received $10,000.
Neems evolved from her “lifelong journey of frustration with finding jeans that properly fit my body in a way that made me feel confident,” she told L.A. Inno.
“My biggest issue was that if jeans fit OK in my hips, they would gape annoyingly at the waist, or they weren't long enough, or they would stretch out a ton after only one wear,” she said. “This re-occurring experience of never finding jeans that genuinely left me feeling good in my body made me give up wearing jeans for a few years.”
Ultimately, she and her business partner, Andre Ramirez-Cedeno, interviewed people at a mall about their experiences with jeans.
“A resounding 100% of participants indicated that they had never found a pair of jeans that fit well,” she said.
They launched Neems in 2019 while she was still working full-time as a consultant. Each pair of jeans is designed and manufactured at the company's Vernon headquarters, she said.
The pandemic forced the new company to learn from and adapt to their customers by getting “honest” feedback, she said.
“Gathering feedback from customers during our early days was critical in our mission to make the experience as seamless as possible for future customers,” she said.
She will use the grant funding to build out Neems’ first physical presence, also in Vernon. This space is intended to include a showroom where customers can get a tactile sense of the various fabrics, an area where they can get measured and a manufacturing space where they can see how the jeans are made.
“Increasingly, customers are expecting an omni-channel experience from brands that goes beyond the digital screen,” she said.
